Siri Hustvedt has a rare gift for finding the human heart in what might be cerebral musings and
rarefied settings.

Her novel
The Blazing World — the title of which is taken from a work of fiction by 17th-century
philosopher and scientist Margaret Cavendish — follows the later years of fictional New York artist
Harriet “Harry” Burden.

Before the 1990s, Harriet had a couple of unsplashy gallery shows but devoted most of her time
to her art-dealer husband, Felix Lord, and her two children.

After Felix dies, Harriet, in her 50s, has what some people consider a nervous breakdown. She
begins working furiously on art projects and comes up with an audacious plan. Thinking that her
early work has been ignored because she is a woman, she plans to find a series of men to pretend to
be the creators of her new work.

Through the years, she chooses three: the young, unsophisticated Anton Tish; a gay performance
artist who has renamed himself Phineas Q. Eldridge; and a charismatic and possibly dangerous fellow
who calls himself only “Rune.”

The novel is constructed as a type of biography, assembled a few years after Harriet’s death by
a relatively clueless academic, I.V. Hess. He stitches together passages from her many journals,
interviews with or writings by her friends and children, observations by acquaintances and gossip
columnists, and reviews of her work — all of which create a fascinating portrait.

Her journal entries range from the intimately personal to the esoterically philosophical:
Sometimes she rants about a relationship, records sessions with her psychiatrist, or recalls her
fraught relationship with her parents or her more loving one with her children in their
infancies.

At other times, she quotes philosophers or feminist theorists — all footnoted by Hess in
fastidious detail. Fortunately, one needn’t know Heidegger from Husserl to fall in love with
Harriet and her messy world.

That world is expanded to giddy width by the other voices in the novel. Everyone sees Harriet
from his or her own point of view. The last word in the novel is given to an unexpected and
touching voice — a minor character who suddenly takes on a major role.

The novel is propelled by a series of small puzzles, some solved and others left open. Its
fundamental mystery is the question of what it means to be Harriet Burden. That one, despite all
the light cast on it, remains beguilingly unsettled.